I created these digital animations in 2009-2010. Each one started with one of my original photographs taken at various stages of my life. I then slowly and “manually” in Photoshop manipulated each frame progressively more abstractly and mirrored the resulting frames into an animated loop. This is what I wrote about them when I first created them:
12/29/09: I’ve just finished a series of 8 art pieces that I’m excited about. This is a new method of working for me that I feel I could keep with for some time. I really enjoyed doing them. For 7 of these pieces I started out with an image from my large selection of photographs that I’ve taken over the years (the first was a found image). I then, in steps, deconstructed the images and reshaped the colors and textures into abstract “paintings”. I am actually physically moving around the pixels with my mouse, very much like painting with paint. It’s not a quick one step computer process. It really feels very much like I’m painting. In some cases I can see where I want to go from the beginning and in others I just let the process guide me. In some cases they look like little explosions of color, in other cases they look somewhat organic. In some cases I deliberately go a step or two beyond the point that I find appealing, it’s interesting to me to be able to document the process of actually going too far, but to still be able to see the point that I consider ideal. And of course all that is up to the viewer and no one would have the same opinion about which frames they prefer. Perhaps in the future I could print the frames individually and perhaps make a series out of each animation. I’m mulling over the options as far as displaying these in a gallery setting.
Thanks for looking,
Elizabeth Montague